Determination and evaluation of web accessibility

The Web is the most pervasive collaborative technology in widespread use today; however, access to the web and its many applications cannot be taken for granted. Web accessibility encompasses a variety of concerns ranging from societal, political, and economic to individual, physical, and intellectual through to the purely technical. Thus, there are many perspectives from which web accessibility can be understood and evaluated. In order to discuss these concerns and to gain a better understanding of web accessibility, an accessibility framework is proposed using as its base a layered evaluation framework from Computer Supported Co-operative Work research and the ISO standard, ISO/IEC 9126 on software quality. The former is employed in recognition of the collaborative nature of the web and its importance in facilitating communication. The latter is employed to refine and extend the technical issues and to highlight the need for considering accessibility from the viewpoint of the web developer and maintainer as well as the web user. A technically inaccessible web is unlikely to be evolved over time. A final goal of the accessibility framework is to provide web developers and maintainers with a practical basis for considering web accessibility through the development of a set of accessibility factors associated with each identified layer

An investigation into the perspectives of providers and learners on MOOC accessibility

An effective open eLearning environment should consider the target learner’s abilities, learning goals, where learning takes place, and which specific device(s) the learner uses. MOOC platforms struggle to take these factors into account and typically are not accessible, inhibiting access to environments that are intended to be open to all. A series of research initiatives are described that are intended to benefit MOOC providers in achieving greater accessibility and disabled learners to improve their lifelong learning and re-skilling. In this paper, we first outline the rationale, the research questions, and the methodology. The research approach includes interviews, online surveys and a MOOC accessibility audit; we also include factors such the risk management of the research programme and ethical considerations when conducting research with vulnerable learners. Preliminary results are presented from interviews with providers and experts and from analysis of surveys of learners. Finally, we outline the future research opportunities. This paper is framed within the context of the Doctoral Consortium organised at the TEEM'17 conference

Regional perspectives on office service accessibility in Finnish banking markets: are there differences in service accessibility between the regions?

In Finland there was huge reduction in number of bank branches during the 1990?s which seems to be stabilized during last few years and even some new bank branches has been founded. In this paper I analyze the locations of bank branches in Finland by using municipality level data containing both economic and geographic variables. At first I analyze banks? entry/exit by the area-basis. Then the concentration in analysis moves to branch network strategies of bank groups, i.e. what is the typical office network strategy of centrally managed bank groups and how bank groups with decentralized decision-making differ from that, and what are the geographic core market areas of the bank groups. At last the differences in bank office service availability between Finnish provinces is analyzed in the light of previous results. Data used in analysis is panel containing bank branch numbers for each bank group in municipality, and population, geographic and economic features of municipalities in years 1995, 1997, 1999 and 2001.

Attitudes, Knowledge, and Beliefs on Cancer and its Prevention in Northwestern Rural Alaska

Rural Alaskans face unique challenges in accessibility. Most villages and cities are not connected to road systems, limiting travel between rural and urban areas. This also limits connectivity between small communities. Residents rely heavily on air travel. The accessibility of health care and education is limited due to geographical isolation of communities (State of Alaska, 2006). The State of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (2009) cites cancer as the leading cause of death in Alaska since 1993. Early detection and treatment is key as it reduces the risk of mortality due to different forms of cancer. Accessibility of cancer education, screening, treatment, and other needs are restricted by cost and the availability of transportation (State of Alaska, 2006). This study aims to provide regionally relevant information focusing on current Northwestern rural Alaskan knowledge, beliefs, and perspectives on cancer and its prevention. Assessment of these topics will provide useful information to rural Alaskan health care providers. The information can be used by these providers to focus their resources toward needed areas. This can help in the provision of a tailored health education approach, which may increase effectiveness of educational communication to each distinct community

Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Food Accessibility Research

An approximately 54.4 million people or 17.7% of the U.S population live in areas without nutritious food outlets, have low access to a vehicle and have challenges accessing a nutritious food outlet. The lack of access to nutritious food outlets mainly affects low-income residents of both urban and rural areas and remains a challenge because the deprived residents mostly depend on innutritious food outlets such as neighborhood convenience stores, which can be detrimental to their health. Researchers of varying disciplines have examined the problem of food access, however, in a piecemeal nature. This paper, therefore, critically examines research across two disciplines concerned with food accessibility - geography and public health to create a more comprehensive approach to food accessibility research based on their perspectives and approaches. Although some dissimilarities exist between the perspectives and approaches employed in food accessibility research by the two disciplines, common grounds are established via the identification of the concept of place and socio-economic characteristics of people as the main driving factors of food accessibility research among the disciplines.These perspectives are integrated along the common driving elements to form an interdisciplinary research approach and construct a comprehensive understanding of the problem of food accessibility

Dispersion or Concentration for the 1.5 Generation?: Destination Choices of the Children of Immigrants in the U.S.

This paper examines determinants of destination choice for foreign-born and 1.5 generation adult children of immigrants in the U.S. An immigrant concentration- weighted accessibility parameter is included to assess the spatial structure of destination choice. A comparative origin-destination immigrant-native wage gap measure is also a strong determinant of destination choice, indicating the importance of relative labor market position. Although spatial assimilation perspectives would suggest that intergenerational social mobility should be connected with spatial dispersion, these models reveal the continuing importance of immigrant concentration for the 1.5 generation. Further, the increased model strength and parameter estimates associated with immigrant concentration and the accessibility measure suggest the spatial structure of destination choice depends on immigrant concentration at multiple scales – both to metro areas and to immigrant states or regions. The paper thus presents evidence for and suggests more attention to theorizing the geographic contexts of intergenerational immigrant incorporation

Evaluating spatiotemporal modal accessibility to community pharmacy services in Lisbon municipality

There are several studies on accessibility to community pharmacy services, emphasizing it as an important element to help address public health and to promote the well-being of the population by providing a very broad array of pharmaceutical services. However, the majority focuses on pedestrian and/or car geographical accessibility, somehow ignoring both the temporal inequity and the influence of the choice of transportation mode. In this paper, we present both spatial and temporal accessibility perspectives to community pharmacy services considering five periods depicting the operational hours of the facilities, and two different travel modes - walking and public transport (PT). In addition, a disparity index is calculated to understand the influence that the transport mode exerts on accessibility to the facilities.N/

Land use patterns and access in Mexico City

The problem of distribution of land uses in urban space in Latin American cities has been examined under different perspectives. Most authors tend to model patterns of population and land use as a consequence of social and economic processes alone, failing to address urban space as an intrinsic variable. Instead, the theory of cities as movement economies argues that land use patterns are influenced by movement flows, which are in turn strongly affected by the urban grid. As a result, land uses such as retail would seek highly accessible locations to take advantage of such flows while residential uses would avoid them. However, space syntax techniques traditionally used to point out this relationship do not seem to reveal it so easily in non-organic cities like Mexico. This paper addresses the relationship between patterns of accessibility and land use in the first ring of Mexico City as a spatial strategy. A new functional description of the city where plots are nodes connected to flows that represent the street network is adopted. This model enables us to measure accessibility at the level of plots. Following this, we focus on the occurrence of land use types in highly or low accessible locations using cumulative distribution functions. If the distribution of land uses was random, the proportion of land use types would be more or less uniform throughout the area. It is shown that the relationship between accessibility and land use is not linear and is guided by movement economy forces. It is suggested that the understanding of these relationship is key to plan for sustainable growth objectively

Watch Out-It’s My Private Space! Examining the Influence of Technology Driven Intrusions on Employee Performance

In this research we draw upon organizational literature on spatial intrusion to identify two components of technology related employee intrusion concerns -- employee accessibility and employee visibility. Situating our arguments in learning and control perspectives, we theorize the influence of employee ‘accessibility’ and ‘visibility’ on two technology enabled employee outcomes of productivity and innovation. We test the proposed research model through a survey of senior organizational managers who regularly use organizational technologies for executing their routine tasks. Results indicate that employee accessibility generally has positive while employee visibility has negative relationship with performance outcomes. Findings have significant implications for research and practice because they show that spatial intrusion does not necessarily have a negative influence on employee performance

Remote and rural palliative care

As this chapter explores the role of the rural nurse in the provision of palliative care, it is worthwhile to spend a little time explaining the role and context of rural nursing practice, and how the context of practice impacts upon the scope of services that rural nurses can access to meet the needs of the terminally ill client. Following this, the chapter will focus on accessibility and delivery of palliative care services from the clients' and rural nurses' perspectives. The chapter will conclude that, for palliation to be successful in rural areas, more attention has to be paid to the skilling of rural nurses. Further, the very diversity of rural communities means that, for a rural palliative care service to be successful, this diversity must be recognised and taken into consideration in planning service delivery